Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
The acronym SARS, which stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, is currently an abbreviation that has become familiar to the average newspaper reader living in the United States. Indeed, most newspapers have been reporting avidly the evolution of this new infectious disease which constitutes an emerging and imperative worldwide public health issue. Every day, the general public is bombarded by the media with the forever changing statistics of this highly contagious disease which still remains for the most part a mysterious illness to the scientific researchers and the medical care providers. Consequently, the cumulative number of reported cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is increasing on a daily basis, and is no longer limited to Guangdong Province in southern China where the illness originated in the fall of 2002. SARS, according to the World Health Organization (2003) is responsible for 6583 sick individuals and 461 deaths, located in approximately 28 countries as of May 5, 2003 (p2). This illness is now considered to be a global threat to humanity not only by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, but also by the World health Organization which both took proactive measures against its spread.